Lady Fiona Wachter

If the PCs meet Fiona on favorable terms, she takes her time feeling out the players and their personalities. However, she is quite open, if politely so, about her distaste for the Burgomaster.

Fiona might use the following stories/information to sway the party's opinions of Vargas:

• Vargas isn't the first terrible Burgomaster of the Vallakovich family. Each Burgomaster has been just as terrible, if not worse, in their rules. Don't the PCs feel such leadership should end with Vargas?
• Vargas and his captain, Izek Strazni, are brutes. Many believe only Izek is responsible for torturing prisoners, but Fiona knows that Vargas has his own mean streak. Perhaps that is why his wife, Lydia, is so delicate in nature...
• Fiona tried to do the diplomatic thing and consolidate an understanding with the Burgomaster by arranging the marriage between their children. However, she was unaware that Victor Vallakovich could be as cruel as his father at so young an age. Though Fiona doesn't know what exactly Victor did to make her daughter lose her mind, she knows it must have been horrible. It obviously and truthfully pains Fiona to relate Stella's condition to the party, but she'll do so to impress the corruption of the Burgomaster's family line.

If Strahd comes up in conversation:

• Fiona is the only person in Vallaki who will call Strahd by name, directly against Vallaki's laws. She does this because she has no fear of him.
• Fiona sees no monster in the land but Vargas himself. Fiona believes that Vargas' fear of Strahd is only an excuse to get away with mistreating the people of Vallaki. She believes Vargas actively sows that fear to get the people to follow to him in a great conspiracy. This is false, however. Vargas actively believes the delusions he preaches and is in no way as manipulative as Fiona thinks.
• As in the raw text, Fiona refers to Strahd as simply a "negligent landlord."
• If the flow of conversation allows, Fiona will happily relate her meeting with Strahd when she was a teenager (detailed in the NPC post). She uses the story to prove how benign she believes Strahd to be.

Meeting Strahd- When Fiona was fifteen, she convinced her parents to let her take a trip to the Village of Barovia to see if they could make some political connections. However, she took a little detour to Castle Ravenloft to meet the infamous devil that everyone was so afraid of.- Strahd didn't have a real interest in Fiona, but acted as a gentlemanly host during her visit. Fiona was never the most beautiful of girls, but she'd sharpened her mind and charismatic skills pretty well for her young age.- While Strahd never had a romantic interest in her, he saw her capability and potential and offered Fiona a place among his consorts as a vampire. Fiona politely declined and said that she could more adequately serve him as she was and perhaps provide him with information on Vallaki. Strahd happily agreed to the alliance. In return for her service, Strahd gifted Fiona with a few tomes on magic as well an Imp to act as her familiar so that she'd "never truly be alone in this world."- Thus, Fiona's servitude to Strahd began.

The Prophesy

• This is the event that really turned Fiona and molded who she is as a person.
• On her way back to Vallaki, Fiona made yet another stop at the Tser Pool encampment to meet the famous Madam Eva. The Vistani welcomed Fiona, as they always do to travelers, and Madam Eva gladly read her fortune.
• Madam Eva saw the following in Fiona's future:

First, there would be the coming of an outsider to Vallaki, foreign to this land. The coming of this outsider would mark the beginning of a new age in Vallaki.

The coming of the outsider would also bring a great ruin. A purge on the town like none other.

But when the ruin was done, the blood of the outsider would shed sunlight on Vallaki yet again.

• In general, prophesies can be interpreted in many different ways. There's no absolute way to fulfill one. And that's the general trouble with fortune telling. However, Fiona latched onto this fortune and it became her obsession.